In a move that is reflective of how markedly different the Trump administration's approach to criminal justice will be than Obama's was, federal prosecutors have been informed by the Attorney General's office itself that they are to seek the harshest possible charges for citizens in violation of the law. The mandate was issued via a two-page memo that was recovered by the press on Friday, May 12. The document encourages prosecutors to "charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense":
"By definition, the most serious offenses are those that carry the most substantial guidelines sentence, including mandatory minimum sentences," the document goes on to clarify for the thousands of attorneys who received it days earlier. "Charging and sentencing recommendations are bedrock responsibilities of any prosecutor. And I trust our prosecutors in the field to make good judgments."
While Sessions claimed, during a speech before the Sergeants Benevolent Association of New York City, that the policy shift is not tailored to imprison low-level drug users or dealers, many are taking the wording in the message to signify a turnabout from the culture of law enforcement under Sessions predecessor, Eric Holder. "They deserve to be unhandcuffed and not micromanaged from Washington," he wrote in defense of attorneys who felt their hands were tied by Holder's insistence that they avoid slamming the gavel on non-violent criminals, with charges that would result in sentencing to mandatory minimums, and other such draconian legalities.
Decreasing the nationwide prison population by shortening the sentences of low-level offenders became one of the primary focuses of Obama's administration in its final years. He'd grant clemency to over 1,500 inmates determined to be less of a threat than their sentences may have indicated. By the time he left office 562 of those were federal inmates who had their terms commuted, leading to Obama having commuted the sentences of more federal inmates than the nine previous Presidents combined. Meanwhile, criminal justice reform became a popular issue for both democrats and republicans, who appeared to agree across the aisle, that mass incarceration has been expensive and counterproductive. Holder himself issued a statement blasting Sessions' policy as "not tough on crime," but, "dumb on crime" after receiving news of the memo.
"It is an ideologically motivated, cookie-cutter approach that has only been proven to generate unfairly long sentences that are often applied indiscriminately and do little to achieve long-term public safety," he said.
Source: apnews.com
